WEYERS CAVE – Matt Wampler climbs up into a large tractor, at least two stories high.

He's got a computer system next to his seat that gets signals from satellites in order to make laying corn seed easier and more efficient. Wampler has been a farm hand at Cave View Farms for nine years.

It took three years to get the auto-guidance system on the planter working through GPS signals. The 12-row planter is used to plant corn and soybeans. Wampler can set up each part of the farm, which is more than 2,000 acres, to be hooked directly up through GPS in order to lay out each crop precisely. The farm can get a bigger yield of crop taking less time. It's just one of the ways Valley farmers are utilizing advances in technology to maximize their time and money.

Same spot every year

In a rig like this, the GPS system runs the tractor and the planter. As a backup system, they have a bay station across the farm that allows the GPS signal to stay intact.

Basically, Wampler can sit back and relax once everything is set up. He's just on board to make sure nothing goes wrong. This is the first year he's been able to solely use the GPS planting system.

"You've just got to go up here and set up what you want to do," he said. On the computer screen, the tractor can be maneuvered in different ways, like around trees, curves in the field or to help with irrigation.

Each section of the farm is saved within the computer system, and he can also alter each line specifically. "It'll save whatever I plant here, and it'll save those lines," he said. "So, next year I can plant in the same exact spot I did last year."

Memorial Day, Wampler was able to plant more than 12 acres an hour amounting up to 150 acres of soybeans. He said he was able to plant 150 bags of soybeans, with each bag weighing 50 pounds.

With the new technology, he can operate the machine in any hour, especially at night due to it running directly off of satellites.

Before, Wampler could do about 10 acres an hour by following a foam line, which makes it harder to stay on track and can mess up the whole line of crops. "It's a whole lot easier, it's a lot harder to find a foam line at night," he said.

To build up to the stage the farm is at with their field technology took more than $350,000 for the tractor, the planter and the system.

The farm, in Weyers Cave, run by Gerald Garber, has been there for more than 50 years and is a massive dairy operation with more than 500 operating dairy cows and 1,100 total animals on the farm.

Cows with bracelets

Starting in 2000, Garber switched over to the Afimilk system — a computerized system used in dairy operations and herd management — to keep track of his dairy cows.

Every cow has an ankle bracelet. They enter the milking barn, once in the morning and then again in the evening, 32 at a time.

Inside the milking barn, each station that the cow goes to has a small computer system that can track each cow that comes up. The ankle bracelet records how many steps a cow takes and then when it enters the barn it records the milk production which helps target different health problems. "You kind of know they're getting sick before they do," Garber said.

If the cow is walking less, something is most likely wrong with them. If they have more steps than usual, they're "looking for love," Garber said.

If the milk production is down, the cow needs to be checked out. Cows are like people," he said. "People walk fast, people walk slow. Every cow has a baseline number of steps. If she increases in a day's time or decreases that's also a signal that something is going on with them."

That will register an alarm within the milking barn. When the cow is sent out to the main barn, the ones who have registered something wrong with them will be transported to the hospital barn to be examined. Garber can do this with another gate that is electronically set off by the cow's tracking devices.

"If you are going to do it right, then you've got to get all the information," Garber said.

Garber ships 40,000 pounds of milk, or 20 tons, a day that goes south. For the entire system, he spent about half-a-million dollars.

Staying upgraded

Garber knows he's got to spend money to make money. With his large dairy and crop operations, he's willing to put in the money to know he's getting a bigger and better yield.

Moving more toward a technological based company, Tellus Consulting in Radiant, Va., is using precision agriculture, much like what Garber uses on his farm with planting corn and soy beans.

Tim Woodward, of Tellus, said his business has boomed since its inception in 1991 and really skyrocketed about three years ago.

"Number one for the farmers is the money, if it doesn't pay they're not going to do it," Woodward said it also has a huge environmental benefit. "We're seeing savings of $30 to $40 an acre with fertilizer. Also we're not putting down as much nitrogen which is good for the environment."

Matt Booher, extension agent for the Virginia Cooperative Extension, said some farmers are even using drones for field scouting along with other advancements. "There have also been a host of advancements in crop genetics, safer pesticides, and animal health, that have helped farmers to be better managers," Booher said. "Most technologies are a big step forward, and for the most part offer affordable opportunities to improve profitability. Farming will always require hands-on knowledge, however, and farmers today have to balance technology with an understanding of the basics of animal and plant sciences."

But Garber wouldn't change his life at all — he loves what he does. He's been farming since he could walk and he took over the farm from his father. His toys growing up were small tractors, and he would make farms under the dining room table.

"If you're standing still, you're standing still," he said. "You've got to decide if you getting in or getting out, you just got to keep making upgrades. If something is available to make something more efficient, you want to deal in few of costs as possible, and labor is a big cost."